Agrivoltaics, the dual use of land for energy and food production, promises to improve people’s lives, but its adoption is hindered by various challenges. Drones appear well suited to supporting the enhanced need for monitoring and maintenance associated with agrivoltaic systems, due to their affordability, efficiency, and operational flexibility. A challenge is understanding what has already been done and what remains to be done in regard to the opportunities and obstacles that exist for drones in agrivoltaics, also in various local sectors, and with respect to the trend toward artificial intelligence (AI) and growing autonomy in technology. Thus, the current paper presents the results of an exploratory, big-picture review, identifying important themes and potentially interesting gaps that could be leveraged in the next years, including perspectives on research, industry, AI, and local initiatives. Finally, opportunities and roles are discussed, with the aim of stimulating interest and ideation in the area. Overall, the literature suggests that activity in the area is multinational, high, and increasing, yet still in an exploratory phase. Future work will include transferring various technical capabilities, to conduct integrated studies that leverage latest innovations in real world environments. © 2026 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY license. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Crime is a critical problem-which often takes place behind closed doors, posing additional difficulties for investigators. To bring hidden truths to light, evidence at indoor crime scenes must be documented before any contamination or degradation occurs. Here, we address this challenge from the perspective of artificial intelligence (AI), computer vision, and robotics: Specifically, we explore the use of a blimp as a "floating camera" to drift over and record evidence with minimal disturbance. Adopting a rapid prototyping approach, we develop a proof-of-concept to investigate capabilities required for manual or semi-autonomous operation. Consequently, our results demonstrate the feasibility of equipping indoor blimps with various components (such as RGB and thermal cameras, LiDARs, and WiFi, with 20 minutes of battery life). Moreover, we confirm the core premise: that such blimps can be used to observe crime scene evidence while generating little airflow. We conclude by proposing some ideas related to detection (e.g., of bloodstains), mapping, and path planning, with the aim of stimulating further discussion and exploration. © 2025 Copyright for this paper by its authors. Use permitted under Creative Commons License Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0).

Technologies such as robotics, Artificial Intelligence (AI), and Computer Vision (CV) can be applied to crime scene analysis (CSA) to help protect lives, facilitate justice, and deter crime, but an overview of the tasks that can be automated has been lacking. Here we follow a speculative prototyping approach: First, the STAIR tool is used to rapidly review the literature and identify tasks that seem to have not received much attention, like accessing crime scenes through a window, mapping/gathering evidence, and analyzing blood smears. Secondly, we present a prototype of a small drone that implements these three tasks with 75%,85%, and 80% performance, to perform a minimal analysis of an indoor crime scene. Lessons learned are reported, toward guiding next work. ©2025 IEEE

[No abstract available]

In the future, what if robots could defend humans who are under their care or who are nearby when a crime is occurring? In this paper, we explore people's feelings of trust toward robots who are defending others through non-lethal force in two countries that heavily use robots: the United States and Japan. We conducted web-based experiments where participants watched six videos of a robot that was defending a victim. The results suggest that people in Japan are more inclined to trust a robot that actively defends humans. However, unlike in Japan, Americans did not show greater trust toward a robot that successfully defends others compared with robots that tried and failed or merely watched. Autonomous robots were generally considered more trustworthy than manually controlled robots in both the United States and Japan. © 2025 Informa UK Limited.

[No abstract available]

With power comes responsibility: as robots become more advanced and prevalent, the role they will play in human society becomes increasingly important. Given that violence is an important problem, the question emerges if robots could defend people, even if doing so might cause harm to someone. The current study explores the broad context of how people perceive the acceptability of such robot self-defense (RSD) in terms of (1) theory, via a rapid scoping review, and (2) public opinion in two countries. As a result, we summarize and discuss: increasing usage of robots capable of wielding force by law enforcement and military, negativity toward robots, ethics and legal questions (including differences to the well-known trolley problem), control in the presence of potential failures, and practical capabilities that such robots might require. Furthermore, a survey was conducted, indicating that participants accepted the idea of RSD, with some cultural differences. We believe that, while substantial obstacles will need to be overcome to realize RSD, society stands to gain from exploring its possibilities over the longer term, toward supporting human well-being in difficult times. © 2023 by the authors.

The COVID-19 pandemic helped spark a surge in innovative usages of technology in education, from robot-based remote graduation ceremonies to immersive learning through extended reality, meetings in fantastical game worlds, automatic examination methods, and flexible learning options such as hybrid classes. It’s been said that we can’t go back to “normal” because this is normal now–but what exactly is today’s “new normal”? The current paper reports on the results of an anonymous online survey conducted with 42 teachers in business, IT, nursing, and education at our university in October 2021, to gain insight into where some teachers on the “front lines” currently stand on the use of technology in education. Some insights included that: More teachers than we had expected were using robotics and extended reality (XR), suggesting that silo effects can exist in education, even at small universities; furthermore, the rates of teachers who had seen such usage seemed close to the rates of teachers who had tried using them, suggesting the usefulness of raising awareness to promote professional digital competence (PDC). Rates for using games and exam tools were lower than expected, despite the availability of game platforms and a growing need to consider the threat of how technology can be misused to cheat in exams, possibly due to teachers’ limited time for pedagogical development. Also, teachers appeared to have strong and differing opinions about learning formats, although a general preference was observed for physical classes and exams, and hybrid teacher meetings. Our aim is that these results will be used by our university’s pedagogical center to support our teachers’ PDC and uses of edtech in the near future. © 2023, ICST Institute for Computer Sciences, Social Informatics and Telecommunications Engineering.

Motivated by the expectation that robot presence at crime scenes will become increasingly prevalent, the question arises of how they can protect humans in their care or vicinity. The current paper delves into the concept of 'robot self-defense' and explores whether a robot should be tele-operated or autonomous, and how humans perceive imperfections in robot performance. To gain insight into how people feel, an online survey was conducted with 180 participants, who watched six videos of a robot defending a victim. The study provides insights into trust in human-robot interactions and sheds light on the complex dynamics involved in robot self-defense. The results indicate that people found a tele-operated robot to be more accepted, and that attempting to help but failing is more acceptable than just observing. © 2023 IEEE.